Case Study

Know Your Charter

Services

Background

Digital data hub demands accountability and transparency for a broken charter school system

Even the biggest proponents of charter schools know Ohio’s charter schools are grossly underperforming, due largely to a lack of oversight. In 2013, Ohio public schools lost $900,500,253 in funding to charter schools. Nearly 400 charter schools operate in Ohio, but with less accountability than traditional public schools. Parents, educators and policymakers need to be able to see the comparative performance of charters, as well as their cost to local school districts.

In 2014, Ohio Education Association created Know Your Charter to combat misinformation and present the facts on charter schools across the state. Revolution Messaging became the digital partner for the project, providing web development, data analysis, digital advertising and email.

The heart of Know Your Charter is a data-rich website, KnowYourCharter.com. This responsive site was designed and developed to help Ohioans better understand how publicly funded charter schools are faring and how they compare to traditional public schools. KnowYourCharter.com provides analysis from a bevy of Ohio Department of Education school data. We provided an open-sourced library of scripts that parse, compile and prepare data for SQL import that can be viewed on GitHub for added credibility.

Visitors to the site are invited to enter either their school district or a specific charter school to see the data. The resulting information can be staggering, revealing how often charter schools underperform despite receiving so much tax-payer funding at the expense of public schools.

Our team developed a full digital strategy to promote the website, including email, digital advertising and creative for online display and mobile promotion. The message of all ads – targeted primarily to parents of young children – urged individuals to visit the site and compare the schools. The facts speak for themselves. Social media and high impact advertising played a prominent role in launching the site, featuring a series of local newspaper homepage takeovers. As a result, the shocking disparities between performance and funding were brought to light.

Outcome

Know Your Charter’s transparent comparison effort has effectively exposed the faults of the current charter system and brought the debate to the statewide stage. Since launching in 2014, the site has received positive media in major state and national publications. The Republican governor has even acknowledged that reform is needed and has agreed to collaborate with the client. “We are going to fix the lack of regulation on charter schools,” Kasich said.

But there is still more work to be done. The site continues to grow, including a school comparison feature launched in 2015 and ongoing data updates as the state releases new numbers. The ability to search and compare charter schools makes annual charter school report cards easier to review and clearly differentiates charter school performance.